


Wounds Opened On a Slate-Gray Sea

by AVegetarianCannibal



Category: Hannibal (TV)
Genre: Angst, Dialogue Heavy, M/M, Post-Episode: s03e13 The Wrath of the Lamb, Rough Sex, selective use of passive tense, will's sexuality is sort of addressed
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-05
Updated: 2018-02-05
Packaged: 2019-03-13 21:43:43
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,150
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13579506
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/AVegetarianCannibal/pseuds/AVegetarianCannibal
Summary: Will can't come to terms with how he feels about Hannibal.





	Wounds Opened On a Slate-Gray Sea

Will looks pained from more than his injuries, Hannibal thinks. He's looking out over a sea as smooth and dark as slate, and his longing is so palpable that Hannibal can taste it in the back of his throat like the salt air.

He joins him at the railing at the bow of their small boat and dares to ask, "What are you wanting?"

"I... want things that can never happen." Will turns that look of longing on him then, and it almost sends Hannibal reeling with the force of it.

He grips the railing for balance. "Are you so certain? That they can never happen?"

Will pulls his gaze away and casts it back toward the water. "This is the life we ended up in. What happens already happened. Maybe in the vast multiverse there's a different version of me that gets what he wants."

"And what is that?"

"I want..." He gives a great, shaky sigh. "I want to have been a different version of myself, meeting a different version of you." Even in profile, Hannibal can see the glint of the tears gathering in his eyes.

He chooses his words carefully, as he nearly always does. "Would you have wanted for those different versions to feel for each other what we do? In this life we ended up in?"

Will shrugs. "Couldn't we have just been normal people who fell in love with each other? A teacher and a psychiatrist who really were _just_ a teacher and a psychiatrist?"

How sweet to hear a confession of love and how bitter to hear a confession of love this way. He clears his throat. "It wouldn't have been us."

"Different versions of us," Will says.

"Not even that, I'm afraid," Hannibal says. He pushes away a fleeting feeling of shyness and asks, "How do you envision we would have met?"

"The same way. Jack Crawford would have asked you to meet me."

"Jack Crawford would have had no reason to ask me to meet you. You would have been unburdened by dark thoughts. You may not have gone into policework or teaching at all. You may have become a mechanic rather than seeking a way to atone for sins you'd only committed in your mind. Perhaps you would have been a veterinarian, specializing in rescued dogs." He makes an attempt at smiling but he feels it faltering even as it begins.

"We would have met in some other way," Will says, insistent and irritable and lying mostly to himself.

"Do you imagine our eyes would have met in some random place and we'd understand we were meant to come across each other? That despite being other people in another world, we'd look at each other and think, ' _Finally, it's you_ '?"

"Nothing as trite as that. But somehow..."

"I would certainly have found you beautiful enough to sketch or to flirt with, but you---being some other version of yourself---would never have given me another thought. How was it that Margot Verger put it to you about proclivities and the right parts?"

Will makes a dismissive gesture as if he were waving away a persistent fly. "That doesn't matter to me."

"It doesn't matter to you, _this_ you, because you are not _that_ you," Hannibal says. "In the end, the fact that we see and understand and accept one another is more important to you than the shape of my hips."

"Don't reduce me to---"

"I would never reduce you to anything."

"Damn it, Hannibal! I'm trying to tell you that I want to be _happy_ with you!" With that, Will pushes himself away from the railing and stalks towards him.

Hannibal finds himself pressed against the outside of the cabin. "Then let yourself be." His wounds, back and front, throb in protest. "Let yourself be."

Will's eyes are darker than the sea behind him. "I can't--- _this_ me, _this_ Will Graham---can't accept the way I am with the way you are."

Hannibal shrugs. "Then accept that you can't accept it," he says.

Will fumes. His face pulls where it is bandaged, and he bares his teeth like a feral thing. He is at war with himself, and Hannibal places no bets on which side will win, or even if a side will win, and simply lets Will come to whatever conclusion or approach he must. Will takes him by the shoulders, thumbs digging hard against his clavicles, and shoves once before jerking him back into a rough embrace.

Hannibal tastes blood when they kiss, and an echo of whiskey, and feels the small sharp points of Will's teeth on his lips and tongue. Their unshaved chins scrape together like shark skins rubbed the wrong way. Hannibal is aware of Will reaching behind him to open the cabin door and push him inside, lets himself be moved in whatever way is needed.

Will pulls back a fraction of an inch, breathing hard. "Sometimes I want to tear you limb from limb."

"You may split me in half," Hannibal says, "if it brings you peace."

In the next instant, he is put on his back in the narrow bed they've been sharing without sharing until now, and Will strips them both of most of their clothes. He has little time to prepare himself before Will penetrates him. The shock of it, the stinging pain of it and the skidding drag of skin on skin makes him gasp and forget, for a time, how to exhale.

Will adds something wet and slick---in the dark, Hannibal doesn't see what, but it has a slightly medicinal smell---and it eases his motions, but only somewhat. Will plows into him as if he could find something at the center of him and is beyond desperate to get to it. Hannibal has to brace a hand above his head to keep his place on the mattress.

Will's wounds have opened. His own wounds have opened. They bleed and sweat and come together, clasping at one another as if they were in danger of drowning again. The air is metallic with their blood, wet and seminal, and thickly indolic from coupling without preparation. Will collapses on top of him, kisses his temple and sobs, "We were supposed to die," over and over.

"Some other version of us, perhaps," Hannibal allows. "Not you and not me, as we are here and now."

He lets Will fall asleep against him and rest for as long as he can find it. When he wakes, Hannibal will dress their wounds again, and Will may likely despair again, but Hannibal knows that the despair, the sheer desperation and intensity of it, is because he also feels the beginning of happiness. It is only natural for him, this Will who is here and now, to struggle against it, just as it is Hannibal's nature to bring him through it.

 

 

-end-


End file.
